How DO You Keep It Together to Avoid Being Excessively Chilled by the World?
What is really essential to keeping it together spiritually? We recommend three observances:
- Take time for prayer, meditation, and reflection — each day, at minimum, and more than once a day, if possible. And, when the spirit moves, take a retreat — go to the mountain and talk to God. These simple but essential practices help you rejuvenate, spiritually, and help you maintain a close connection to Spirit. And needless to say, it is particularly important to hold to this healthy habit during periods when you feel depressed. Think of it as a shelter in the storm.
- LIVE your spiritual life. The spiritual challenge of human life is to live appropriately under a variety of conditions — through the myriad events and tests of life, from here to eternity. So, put your spirituality to the test in everyday life. Recognize that you stand to make the most spiritual progress by accepting the difficulties of ordinary life as the valuable forms of exercise and testing that they truly are. The goal of human existence is not to shirk the strengthening load of living, but to pump that iron in such a way as to build your spiritual muscles.
- SHARE your spiritual fruits. The fruits of your spiritual practice and spiritual consciousness are given to you to share with God in all His forms of manifestation — that means, all His creatures, especially other people.
When you serve, don’t forget Who you are serving. Realize that you are not bringing your fullness to the emptiness of the world; you are bringing your fullness to fullness, your wholeness to wholeness, your light to light. To see world service as charity (giving riches to the poor, and beauty to the undeserving) is a failure to recognize the Divine reality of the recipients. It thereby places an unhelpful limitation upon them. But to behold Divinity in those you see and serve is the most profound spiritual gift you can give them.